i've been playing CRINGE! by mark klem and some other 1994 doom wads over the past few years. and it's become very clear to me over the past few years that the FPS genre (and maybe games as a whole im just woefully underread so i dont rly wanna comment) around 96ish and before just had a radically different set of values about what was good or bad. like the idea of what fits within the modern accepted overton window of game design, whether that's in fan communities or in mainstream design. i also think about the stuff in Spear of Destiny, Marathon, Memento Mori, System Shock (1994), or Serenity/Eternity/Infinity. for example, it's very clear to me that the authors just simply did not think it was an inherent Goodness to have the game be beatable always.
and i don't mean in some skill level testing type of way, even though that is one form of it. memento mori and spear both throw you into situations where your life or death is down to the will of the RNG several times, and i don't think it's an accident. CRINGE! subjects you to required secret after required secret and so forth. marathon's Colony Ship For Sale's obtuse puzzle progression is notorious but it's not some aberration, the game has a few other parts like that. system shock lets you softlock yourself in all sorts of ways, is notorious for its hitscanners, and also presents you with a button that lets you laser the earth to death and game over, if you so choose.
a lot of people like to talk the talk about how game design hasn't progressed linearly through time. like i hope i dont need to reiterate that "oh they just didn't know what they were doing back then" is nonsense? because it is absolutely nonsense. but despite wider acceptance that that's nonsense, there's still this lack of willingness to actually contend with this stuff. to actually gaze upon being trapped in a tight corridor with a baron and only a shotgun and the only thing that can save you is mostly just the luck of how much it decides to attack, and how high it rolls on its damage rolls, despite the level giving you 200/200 health/armor right before.
it's an old cliche in games discourse to say that snakes and ladders isn't "actually a game". yet it's one of the most successful of all time, in a way that makes Call of Duty seem as obscure as, say, Monstrum for the amiga. i'm not sure that "successful" is worth praising, but it appears notable. i'm not sure i can say anything new, anything worth saying, about snakes and ladders.
but there's something to be said for the emotional and storytelling impact of the idea that BJ Blazkowicz, protagonist of Spear of Destiny, might just fucking die. because he's in World War 2. it's cartoon ass world war 2, but still. it's world war 2, you just fucking die there. there's something, completely bizarre about the year-2023 attitude of an fps game compared to that. the modern attitude where you could make it through world war 2 or citadel station or whatever the hell is going on in CRINGE! without relying a lot on luck, no matter how badass you are.
i think about also just. how much we narrow the emotional palette that we have available to us as artists.
i feel like a lot of times if i try to bring up that there's other ways of making or perceiving art, i get this kind of reaction like i'm being a weird snob. and i don't really have an actual defense other than to say: idk it's weird to call me a snob for me saying "hey this can be good too".
there's elements of this kind of design in the more popular FPSes of that previous era like Quake, Duke3D, Doom, and Wolf3D as well. for example the early parts of Wolf3D episode 2. but i think like, familiarity and just how well-tread they are in the general discussion has maybe made me not really evaluate this in those cases. but i bring it up to point out that it wasn't exactly an unpopular thing. it, to me, demonstrates that this has been a shift in the allowed "overton window" of games.
the obvious implication is also that there's stuff that could be a valid "overton window" fitting completely different types of games.
and that we haven't really properly come to terms with any of that culturally. like for example we get a lot of retro-styled shooters and of course the neverending parade of doom wads, but none of them are willing to go full 1994 in terms of what they value. and to a degree it would be impossible anyway. we are who we are and we can't go home again (and other cliches). but there's a lack of conscious awareness and acceptance about any of this too.
i dont know if i have an overarching point here, it's just, been on my mind, for quite some time
now playing: Abul Mogard - Slate-coloured Storm
And it's that I hate how often protagonists rely on sheer luck to survive, though usually that applies to drops, being blown away to safety by an explosion and [the entirety of CoD: Ghosts campaign].
It kind of feels... unearned. Like, what kind of badass are you to rely on luck this much?
I also somehow extend this to all the chosen ones in fantasy and what not. You were born under a star/into the Skywalker bloodline, here's all the power you want!
As for the game designers of old... at least in the RPG circuits, there's a thread of ancient TRUE GAMERS who claim that accepting lolrandumb dice results, no balance, and unavoidable death in games is actually cool and good, and how it's all supposed to be, instead of wasting players' time with shitty game design.
More often than not, it may also be the result of nobody running any testing on the material as the excitement is high, the design skill is low, and a lot of people will accept "a good DM can fix it" as a legitimate way to run things. It may have also been the result of a grudge match between crusty antediluvian GMs and their primordial munchkin players - I'm sure that's how Tomb of Horrors came about. It is not an adventure made for storygamers who love their 10th level Elfson the Elf-Maiden.
Time and time again, it's not intentional good game design that kills you. It's not good game design to provide players with bad outcomes they can't affect. If the players can't get around your "deal d100 damage" bullshit monster, parley with it, lure it into a trap or something, you're just killing players. And unless your idea is to present some sort of Kobayashi Maru scenario, that's probably not great.
Look at it this way: is Snakes and Ladders a good game? No, since the player can't affect the outcomes at all. You can land on ladders to go up or snakes to go down. Your monster that can deal either 1 damage or 100 damage to the player is the same.
And when I was originally writing this draft, I also started watching Mandalore's series on Marathon. Colony Ship For Sale is a long-ass bitch of a level that sucks. You know who recognized that? Devs, that included this apology in the next game.
So even ye ancient developers understand that something you may consider a profound lesson is actually them fucking up.
